Christine Walker is a scholar of women, gender, and slavery in the Atlantic World with expertise in the Caribbean. Her research exposes the diverse yet tangled experiences of free, freed, and enslaved women living in an era of tremendous change. It offers a necessary antidote to historical accounts that feature male actors, while also complicating feminist scholarship that either emphasizes female oppression or celebrates women’s agency. 

RESEARCH

Christine’s first book, Jamaica Ladies: Female Slaveholders and the Creation of Britain’s Atlantic Empire, is the first systematic study of the free and freed women who perpetuated chattel slavery and reaped its profits in the early modern era. Jamaica Ladies reveals women’s instrumental roles in creating the wealthiest and the largest slaveholding colony in British America. 

Christine is working on a second book project, “Imperial Kin,” which shows how certain families converted early investments in Caribbean slavery into global command. It starts in the 1640s, when the Royalist predecessors fled to America during the English Civil War and the Cromwellian Conquest of Ireland. They transformed the tiny islands of Antigua, St. Kitts, Montserrat, and Nevis into new bases of power. The families intermarried, creating sprawling kinship networks where money, estates, titles, and political positions were concentrated. Moving beyond microhistories and case studies, “Imperial Kin” offers an empirically robust account of the intimate dimensions of the colonial rule exercised by groups that effectively used marriage, reproduction, parenting, and elite education to monopolize political authority in America. These dynasties turned imperial administration into a hereditary occupation, and numerous descendants served as Royal Governors and members of colonial assemblies. They also acted as Lord Lieutenants of Ireland and served as MPs in Britain. For more than two centuries, the labor of thousands of enslaved people contributed to the meteoric rise of the families.

Research Interests

• Atlantic World
• Early America
• Early modern Europe
• Women’s and Gender History
• Histories of imperialism/colonialism
• Slavery studies
• Sexuality studies

PUBLICATIONS

Jamaica Ladies: Female Slaveholders and the Creation of Britain’s Atlantic Empire

• Winner, Best Book Award, Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender 
• Winner, William Nelson Cromwell Foundation Book Prize, American Society for Legal History 
• Finalist, Harriet Tubman Prize, Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery

Articles:

“’As Though She ‘was a virtuous woman’: Remaking Gender Roles, Marital Relations, and Families in Atlantic Jamaica,” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 21, no. 2 (August 2020).

“Pursuing her Profits: Women in Jamaica, Atlantic Slavery and a Globalising Market, 1700-1760,” Gender & History 26, no. 3 (November 2014): 478-501.

Book Chapters

“Female Slaveholders in British America,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2024).

“’We are starving for want of Tea:’ Asian objects, domestic slavery, and Caribbean sociability,” Global Goods and the Country House, c.1650-1800, ed. Jon Stobart (London: UCL Press, 2023).

“In Her Own Right: Gender, Slaveholding, and Movable Goods in Colonial Jamaica,” Movable Goods and Immovable Property. Gender, Law and Material Culture in Early Modern Europe, 1450‒1850, ed. Annette Cremer (London: Routledge, 2020).

“Female Slave Owners,” Oxford Bibliographies in Atlantic History, ed. Trevor Burnard, Oxford University Press, (http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com) (September 2019). 

“Gender in the Caribbean,” Oxford Bibliographies in Atlantic History, ed. Trevor Burnard, Oxford University Press, (http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com) (April 2016).

“Womanly Masters: Gendering Slave Ownership in Colonial Jamaica,” Women in Early America: Transnational Histories, Rethinking Master Narratives, ed. Thomas Foster (New York: NYU Press, 2015).

Interviews

“Girlbosses,” HumanResources Podcast (26 Sept, 2023)

“Jamaica Ladies: Female Slaveholders and the Creation of Britain’s Atlantic Empire,” New Books in African American Studies Podcast, New Books Network (21 May 2021)

“Jamaica Ladies: Female Slaveholders and the Creation of Britain’s Atlantic Empire,” Ben Franklin’s World Podcast (19 Jan 2021)

TEACHING AND COURSES TAUGHT

• HIST2213 Witchcraft, Magic and the Devil in Early Modern Europe and America 
• HIST4015 The theory and practice of history